NASA will announce tomorrow at a press conference the first 2 centennial prizes it is offerring. This will be interesting to see what they have come up with and how much money they are putting up. They are going to stream the live announcement over the internet for anyone who wants to see. See attached link for official NASA announcement.

"The first two Centennial Challenges competitions will be released by NASA and its partner, the Spaceward Foundation, on Wednesday, March 23 at 7:45 p.m. EST at Flight School '05, Fairmont Scottsdale Princess Hotel, Scottsdale, Ariz. "

There a link on the NASA Centennial challenge website to a space elevator competition prize so I guess you won the bet.

Bit dissappointing that NASA isn't encouraging spacecraft/rocket builders. Its not a bad project to begin with but there are already a lot people around the world working on carbon nano-tubes so I dont think it needed any more encouragement.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

MSNBC, Space.com, and Wired report that NASA, in collaboration with the non-profit Spaceward Foundation, has announced its first two Centennial Challenges. The Centennial Challenges, inspired by the Ansari X Prize and DARPA Grand Challenge, are prize contests seeking to stimulate private industry development of technologies relevant to space exploration. One contest is the Tether Challenge, for building the sort of super-strong tether needed to make a space elevator feasible. The other is the Beam Power Challenge, for creating a wirelessly-powered ribbon-climbing robot capable of lifting as large a payload as possible within a limited timeframe. The initial set of challenges in 2005 will award $50K to the winners of each contest. A second set of challenges in 2006 will award first, second, and third place prizes worth $100K, $40K, and $10K. It's hoped that these contests will further space elevator technology and help eliminate the 'giggle factor' surrounding them. Additional contests will be announced in the coming weeks, although Congress currently restricts NASA from awarding prizes of more than $250K; the agency is lobbying to try to get this limit raised to $40 million for future prizes.

The prize for the super-strong tether might be oriented to another purpose than the space elevator - a purpose similar to the levator though. Recently there has been an article reporting that NASA is thinking about using 100 k m long tether in space for carrying a payload to the geostationary orbit ( I initiated a thread about it in the Technology section that time). The thinking at NASA about it is close to a decision as I understood it.

The prize for the beamer - which really will be elevator-oriented I think - seems to be competing to elevator:2010 prize(s). That's a bad choice - or does anyone know of elevator:2010 ebing stopped or integrated? At least one of the elevator:2010-prizes is 50,000 $ cash - as well as NASA's two prizes.

The tether prize is okay I think - the bemaer prize should be replaced by something else that is not elevator-oriented.

Here's an update on the elevator prize competition, the first of which is being held in October of this year. I'm surprised that the Spaceward Foundation who are organising it are not getting more backing from NASA and they have to ask for donations of equipment.

A private sponsor has now come forward to help out with the event. I'm a bit surprised it's a mechanical design company rather than a fast food or soft drinks supplier who normally like to plaster their logos over everything at such events.